Asda, the British supermarket arm of Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, reported its first underlying sales growth in three years on Thursday and said its back-to-basics turnaround under a new management team was working. Of Britain's big four supermarket players -– market leader Tesco (Frankfurt: 852647 - news) , Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons -- Asda has been hurt the most by the rise of German discounters Aldi and Lidl as its traditional price advantage was eroded. Wal-Mart has said Asda was too slow in responding to that competition and prior to Thursday's update Asda had reported eleven straight quarters of like-for-like sales decline.

Supermarket group J Sainsbury has put on hold talks over a potential £130m takeover of convenience store wholesaler Nisa until UK competition regulators rule on a similar deal between Tesco and Booker. ...